New here, looking to make a smart choice.

[nolaguy72]

My name is Mark, I live in Slidell LA. Recently I lived through hurricane Ida. I was without power for 7.5 days and I'm looking to make a capital improvement in my home to make the realities of the occasional power outage more livable.

A little background. I have a 15 year old roof. It doesn't have a problem at all and looks fantastic. So the idea of adding a bunch of solar to a 15 year old roof may not be a great choice. On the same token, replacing a roof that has no issues also seems a bad choice, but maybe I'm thinking of this wrong.

My current mindset is to invest in a large professionally installed battery back up system. I've love to have something that could run my whole home for 7 days, but realistically I'd settle for living out of my bed room with a small ac. Years down the road, when I do replace my roof, scale up to solar. So a system that can scale over time would be amazing.

Many of my neighbors used generators, but in my neighborhood we don't have natural gas hookup and the company wants $50,000 to do a hook up so that is a firm no. I've seen people driving to Florida to get gas and working on hot engines in the middle of summer. This is outside my skill level.

Money wise, I'm 10 months away from having my home paid in full. Once that is paid off I'll have the financial confidence to invest in a meaningful upgrade.

SolarEdge products seem pretty good to me, but I'm so new I don't know what I don't know. Any education is greatly appreciated.

Thanks so much!

Mark

 

[Smokin]

Buy a Used Chevy Volt and use it to power the 7 days. You put a 1000 wall transformer inverter on it and configure it correctly and you be alrite.
The Idea is to use the dc to dc converter as a power source. The converter is capabale of outputting 2000 watts or there about. So if nothing in the car is on you have a reserve/overhead of potential power. The car you turn on, then you can set to mountain mode and the battery 350 volt traction battery will run the converter that runs 14 volts to the agm battery which is the tap point for the inverter. When the main battery drops to a low level the gas engine start and recharges the main battery some. Fuel tank holds 10 gallons of gas. This would last a little while. Cool Beans.

 

[nolaguy72]

Its a cool out of the box idea. In Louisiana all cars have to be insured and the price of insurance is about x3 the rest of the country. So my 2019 VW Jetta with no accidents is over $900/ 6 months. Adding an additional car would be a great expense for this state. Surely not the norm elsewhere but its definitely my reality.

 

[nola622]

Hey nolaguy72, I also just joined the forum and live in New Orleans. I can confirm that you don't want to put a ton of solar on a roof near the end of its useful life. I have 108 solar panels on my roof, basically covering the entire useable area on two sides (east and west, not a south facing roof unfortunately). Hurricane Ida damage requires a new roof plus plywood over-decking, a big expense on its own. But I also have to completely remove the solar system and junction boxes, conduit, etc, in order to re-roof. I don't have a battery on my grid-tied system so it wasn't much use during the week without power. Like you, I was happy to not have to constantly hunt for gasoline during that couple weeks - we had enough to do - and I don't want to worry about gasoline supply for future storms. I have hooked up a Champion 100416 to a transfer switch and natural gas line for the next outage since we have natural gas in the city and I don't want a whole house generator (all my neighbors would want to move in LOL).

Sorry not much help on what battery system you should invest in, but good luck - maybe a smaller, affordable solar generator and an efficient window unit like the Midea U shaped models would get you through an outage with only a few panels out in the yard? That's what I am interested in experimenting with.

 

[HomeEcGuy]

The Solaredge (typically used in combination with an LG Chem battery) has a fairly low output rating of about 19 amps per battery. If you went with a system like Generac, Enphase, Sol-Ark or even Schneider, you'd be able to get much more output from a single inverter/battery setup. These options will put out roughly double that of a SolarEdge and any can be added on to to supply more of the house or the whole house.

If you're wanting to run your whole home for a week, financially I'd recommend getting a whole home generator and an on site tank to cover a week of fuel. Running an entire home off of a battery is very expensive. Typically for people interested in batteries in the Hurricane regions of the Carolinas, we tell them to pick their top most important devices in the home and build off of that... Your HVAC systems aren't going to happen generally. Fridge/Freezer, internet, some lights, well pump/sewage grinder pump, gas hot water heater...and that's about it for the average battery backup system.

I'd also consider a ground mount option if possible...If you're in a hurricane and the winds are triple digits, I don't care if everything is rated, that's A LOT of force on your roof. I'd rather pull things out of the ground than out of my roof if given the option. Hope this helps some!

 

[nolaguy72]

Thanks for your response. A ground mounted propane tank and a generator would likely suit my needs better. I'd have to do a permit either way.

 

[Q-Dog]

I'm in Louisiana in a semi rural area near Lafayette. I have neighbors but we have some space between us.

The past couple of years I used a Honda EU2200 to keep the refrigerator cold and the phone/network/computer stuff going. That worked OK but dragging the generator around the house and running extension cords all over the place is a pain. Plus trying to sleep with the windows open while all of the neighborhood generators drone on all night was not much fun.

This year I built a battery backup to run critical loads ... the fridge, plus the computer/phone/network gear, a couple of fans and a couple of lights and the TV ... for a couple of days without charging. I can use the generator to charge up the battery in a few hours if power will be out for more than that. The system has evolved as I used it and figured out what it could do. I added a few watts of solar so the system almost never charges from the grid.

In my testing, the battery backup will run a window A/C as well as my critical loads for 3 or 4 hours. Add the generator and I can be OK as long as I have gasoline. I use a couple of gallons a day at the most.

My signature is a link to my setup.